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3 Million Homes 'Should Be Demolished' To Cut Global Warming
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 5-30-2005 | Charles Clover

Posted on 05/29/2005 7:24:58 PM PDT by blam

3m homes 'should be demolished' to cut global warming

By Charles Clover
(Filed: 30/05/2005)

Some 3.2 million homes must be demolished over the next 45 years to fulfil the Government's aspirations for tackling global warming, academics have warned.

The report, by researchers at Oxford University's Environmental Change Institute and Heriot Watt University, is bound to re-ignite the controversy caused by the proposed demolition of 400,000 homes in the Midlands and the North.

Households account for around 30 per cent of Britain's total energy use and the researchers conclude there is a "desperate need" for a clear strategy for housing stock to bring about the 60 per cent reduction in the country's fossil fuel emissions that Tony Blair has said he wants to see by 2050.

The academics say that Britain's 25 million homes are among the oldest and least efficient in Europe and recommend that 14 per cent of the current stock - 3.2 million homes - should be pulled down by 2050.

Listed buildings would be spared, but the plan would quadruple the present demolition rate to 80,000 homes a year by 2016.

"Care must be taken not to invest money in upgrading those homes that will ultimately be demolished," say the authors.

Even so, two thirds of the housing stock of 2050 has already been built and this will have to be made more efficient. The immediate priority is for walls and lofts, then solid walls, to be insulated. By 2050 all windows will be double or even triple glazed. The report, the "40 Per Cent House", emphasises the need to construct the 10 million new homes that will be built by 2050 to far greener standards than in current building regulations.

John Prescott's department has said that from April 2006 all publicly-funded new homes - including 120,000 planned for Thames Gateway - will comply with a new code for sustainable buildings, due to be released this year.

Quinlan Terry, the leading classical architect, criticised the researchers' recommendations last week at a conference in London about designing sustainable buildings.

He said the proposed demolition missed a "bigger picture", which included the fossil fuels already expended in putting up existing buildings and how long the new buildings would last.

He said that the embodied energy in each Victorian terrace house scheduled for demolition as part of the Government's urban renewal plans in the North was equivalent to 15,000 litres of petrol, according to the Buildings Research Establishment.

The carbon from the fossil fuels burnt to build our existing housing stock was already in the atmosphere, warming the Earth. "So why repeat the process?" asked Mr Terry.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 3m; blight; cary; climatechange; cut; demolished; ecowackos; environment; envirowhackos; fascism; global; globalwarming; homes; loonylefties; propertyrights; should; warming
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To: cbkaty

Really. I think we are going to have to institute some sort of policy that people who come up with this mind numbing garbage must go through mandatory shrink sessions. They are definitly insane.


121 posted on 05/30/2005 9:02:33 AM PDT by marty60
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To: MinorityRepublican
Amazing she's so old yet so pretty.

Jst fed her and she is walking around, she very active and likes to chase the younger cats around. She loves to watch the water go down the drain too. B-)
122 posted on 05/30/2005 9:06:16 AM PDT by Nowhere Man (Lutheran, Conservative, Neo-Victorian/Edwardian, Michael Savage in '08! - DeCAFTA-nate CAFTA!)
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To: marty60
Grat. Two of my cats live to be 18-19 respectively. Good Job.

Thanks. I have 8 cats, Pansy will be 18, Corky turned 16, Boo will be 15 in July, Pixie is around 13, Spunky 5, and her 3 kittens are 4. B-) Last year, we lost Muffin to kidney problems, had she lived another month, she would have been 17, she is/was almost exactly Pansy's age. We kept her going for 2 and a half years so I'm glad we had that extra time with her.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com

Muffin : 1987 - 2004
123 posted on 05/30/2005 9:15:23 AM PDT by Nowhere Man (Lutheran, Conservative, Neo-Victorian/Edwardian, Michael Savage in '08! - DeCAFTA-nate CAFTA!)
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To: cajungirl
So where are the people going to go?



The standard socialist solution. High rise slums.
124 posted on 05/30/2005 9:40:33 AM PDT by Kozak (Anti Shahada: " There is no God named Allah, and Muhammed is his False Prophet")
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To: SamAdams76

Yah. The germans were saving the earth. Who knew.....


125 posted on 05/30/2005 10:37:07 AM PDT by festus (The constitution may be flawed but its a whole lot better than what we have now.)
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To: blam

Are they talking about pulling down the old post-war council houses? I always got the impression they weren't too sturdily built in the first place, and by 2050 they would be a century old and likely falling to bits anyway.


126 posted on 05/30/2005 10:47:30 AM PDT by Eepsy
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Comment #127 Removed by Moderator

To: Prodigal Son
Hmmm... I live in a Victorian Age flat in Edinburgh. It has single-paned windows. Really drafty in the bedroom in the winter. There are historical preservation type laws that prevent double glazed windows from being installed. Have to keep the building looking like it always has and all that sort of thing.

We live in an 1889 Victorian with single-paned double-hung windows. On the ones that have not been broken over the past 116 years, we still have the old glass that looks wavy when you look through it.

There may be a business in designing double-paned inserts to reglaze the original frames with, even giving the outside glass a "wavy" appearance.

It might be a compromise between historical preservation laws and energy conservation needs and a good business opportunity if it works out.

128 posted on 05/30/2005 11:04:21 AM PDT by Polybius
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To: marty60

Marty, it was a joke.


129 posted on 05/30/2005 11:29:28 AM PDT by cajungirl (no)
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To: cajungirl

I know. I thought I put a sarc by it.


130 posted on 05/30/2005 3:03:34 PM PDT by marty60
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To: CommandoFrank
Might I suggest the big 'blue' cities, i.e. San Fran, NYC, LA, Seattle, Portland, etc.

Most cities are blue, right?

131 posted on 05/30/2005 4:10:57 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie
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To: The_Media_never_lie

I believe you are right... and that's why I stay away from them...


132 posted on 05/30/2005 4:48:32 PM PDT by CommandoFrank (Peer into the depths of hell and you will find the face of Islam...)
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To: Nowhere Man
Thanks. I have 8 cats, Pansy will be 18, Corky turned 16, Boo will be 15 in July, Pixie is around 13, Spunky 5, and her 3 kittens are 4. B-) Last year, we lost Muffin to kidney problems, had she lived another month, she would have been 17, she is/was almost exactly Pansy's age. We kept her going for 2 and a half years so I'm glad we had that extra time with her.

What's ur secret for cats living so long?

133 posted on 05/30/2005 6:46:22 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
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To: blam
I vote that we start with Charles Clover's home, and once it's done, move on to the rest of those aforementioned "academics"

Marl

134 posted on 05/30/2005 6:50:00 PM PDT by MarkL (I've got a fever, and the only prescription is MORE COWBELL!!!)
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To: marty60

Oh, I thought you were being mean to me. I am always misunderstanding the sarc thing,,it feels like someone has been sarcastic to me.


135 posted on 05/30/2005 6:54:52 PM PDT by cajungirl (no)
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To: cajungirl

naw...I use it to mean I'm being a smart a**. My remark is not to be taken personally. It's to show that your joke would be serious to the idiots trying to push this rediculous idea.


136 posted on 05/30/2005 7:08:41 PM PDT by marty60
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To: marty60

Exactly my thoughts. Probably the comatose and the terminally ill will be the first to go, then the elderly, soon to be followed by those who refuse to group think. Closer and closer.


137 posted on 05/30/2005 7:23:38 PM PDT by pepperdog
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To: farmfriend; blam

138 posted on 05/31/2005 11:01:15 AM PDT by Seadog Bytes (“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”—Edmund Burke)
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To: CommandoFrank

Me too, except for shopping.


139 posted on 05/31/2005 4:10:16 PM PDT by The_Media_never_lie
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To: blam

Welcome to the New World Order.

POS globalists.

Resist, as best you can.


140 posted on 05/31/2005 4:17:08 PM PDT by lodwick (Integrity has no need of rules. Albert Camus)
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